Cognition Dissemination: Remaster Xenogears

Square Enix has, in recent months, realized their ability to remaster PSOne titles outside the mainline Final Fantasy games, complete with enhancements to make them more playable than the original versions. SaGa Frontier is getting the treatment, due for release this Thursday, which has received a slew of updates to make it more playable and less obtuse than the original. Legend of Mana will be next in line, coming in June. It’s good that these titles could find a new audience comprised of those who either missed the games when they originally released or shunned them due to skewed expectations; it’s also good considering the sole option to legally purchase PSOne games is about to vanish into digital dust within months.

This is a trend that Square Enix will ideally continue. In fact, there’s a key PSOne title that deserves this treatment, perhaps more than any game Squaresoft released on the system (before they merged with Enix in 2003, notably): Xenogears.

Xenogears is deservedly hailed as one of the best Japanese RPGs to grace the PSOne. It’s a game with solid, if quite Neon Genesis Evangelion-inspired, writing and characters, great gameplay with a battle system that took a bit of inspiration from fighting games, and an excellent soundtrack. For as often as the game is named by older folks (sorry) who’ve been playing JRPGs for years, it would still be better if the title could further expand its audience with a new release. It would also be a good way to preserve the game with, again, the only way to currently purchase it evaporating soon.

It’s the potential for enhancements that could make a Xenogears remaster shine. The SaGa Frontier remaster is coming with several, the biggest being the restoration of a character and scenario that didn’t make the cut in the original version. Assorted quality of life enhancements will also be added, like a chart to make completion of each character scenario easier to keep track of, dungeon map icons, and the option to retreat from battles. Xenogears would highly benefit from comparatively minor enhancements like the ability to speed up the text and improved maps to make navigation easier. But the biggest and most necessary addition would be an actually-completed scenario.

The original Xenogears released in an obviously unfinished state. Instead of the game’s story progressing in the fashion established in scenes throughout the first disc, there’s a point on Disc 2 where Fei and Elly are placed within a dark room to narrate further events that unfold. It’s a peculiar switch in perspective compared to what came before. Director Tetsuya Takahashi explained to Kotaku a few years ago that this happened because the development team was full of inexperienced staffers, and couldn’t finish the game by the deadline Squaresoft established. They also didn’t want to ship the game with an unfinished story, so this style was the best compromise they could attempt quickly in an unfortunate situation.

It would be nice if they could go back and finish this for a remaster, but the chances of this happening aren’t as high as I would like, despite the SaGa Frontier example. The recent SaGa remasters and the Legend of Mana remaster are happening due to Akitoshi Kawazu’s involvement with the original titles. They’ve been pet projects he (and perhaps only he) has been able to green light. That might be a taller order for a game he wasn’t involved with. There’s also the issue of the key Xenogears development team members being long gone from Square Enix. This game was developed and released when the company was still Squaresoft, years before the merger with Enix.

Many of those members, like Takahashi and his wife Soraya Saga, left to form Monolith Soft shortly after this game released. Others like art director Yasuyuki Honne and composer Yasunori Mitsuda left after completing work on Chrono Cross, the former of which also going to Monolith Soft. There’s another question regarding whether the company still has the means to add extra content to this game, considering how bad developers (especially those in Japan) can be with keeping source codes around.

If the old team didn’t leave a pile of detailed notes behind, there’s a chance that Nintendo could be negotiated into being more liberal with Monolith Soft’s involvement with a title they won’t publish, solely for this opportunity to let the former staffers finish this game. A Xenogears remaster would be a multiplatform release like the other remasters, so it’s not as if Nintendo wouldn’t benefit in some way with the game releasing on their platform. But we’re talking about Nintendo here, who probably won’t like not having complete control over a process unless Square Enix offers a hell of a deal. There’s additionally a smaller chance that Monolith Soft’s staffers will want nothing to do with this after being gone from Squaresoft for years, but this is the unlikeliest scenario.

Square Enix will likely and fortunately continue with remasters of old games. There are others from Kawazu that can receive the treatment, with the rudimentary SaGa Frontier 2 topping the list and perhaps the eventual Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song. Other games are begging to be ported, like Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions and Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (though it would still be lovely if the former received a semi-remake like the latter did). But a Xenogears remaster deserves to be among the releases. We’ll just have to find out whether those involved with the original game’s creation agree.